artist:
Jamiroquai
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album:
Dynamite
format:
16-bit Stereo CD/Enhanced Stereo DVD
label:
Epic
release year:
2005
performance:
8.5
sound:
7.5
reviewer:
Bryan Dailey
If the Bee Gees, Stevie Wonder, KC & the Sunshine Band and Sade all
got together for a disco orgy, the resulting love child would sing just
like Jay Kay, the front man for modern-day British disco heavyweights
Jamiroquai. America was introduced to Jamiroquai in 1997 with the
release of the multi-platinum album Traveling Without Moving. The song
“Virtual Insanity,” with its retro style and tripped-out video
featuring moving sidewalks that carried Kay all around the screen as he
seemed to moonwalk and float across the room, helped the band cut
through the Nirvanas, Pearls Jams and Soundgardens that were fading in
popularity by that time. Jamiroquai were a bit of a vacation from the
hard grungy music that had been assaulting the airwaves for so long,
and they found a niche that worked on alternative radio, as well as ...

Columbia
performance 8
sound 8
released 2005
Switchfoot’s Nothing is Sound may be giving its members post-graduate stress rather than the anticipated, more familiar sophomore jinx, because this is actually the act’s fifth full-length CD. Some might not realize the group initially built up its following in the Christian marketplace. But its 2003 The Beautiful Letdown was simultaneously its Columbia debut and its commercial breakthrough. Chances are, if you enjoyed this San Diego band’s previous morals-inspired and philosophical work, you won’t be let down – so to speak – with this new release.

Reprise Records
performance 6.5
sound 6.5
released 2005
So what’s a guitar legend supposed to do with the rest of his career when, just barely out of his teens, “Clapton is God” graffiti starts popping up on the walls and alleys of London?
(Here’s yet another example of how your life is enriched in ways you couldn’t imagine by reading Audio Video Revolution. I’m going to reveal a very well-kept “inside” secret here: that afro EC sprouted just after he formed Cream, and, uh, also around the time he met newly-arrived-in-London Jimi Hendrix? – had nothing to do with copping Jimi’s fashion sense. Eric’s head had actually swelled that much, and rather than a massive mop, he had just a very short covering of frizzy hair on that huge head. It’s true. Examine the photos.)

artist:
DEVO
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album:
Live 1980
format:
DualDisc
label:
Music Video Distributors
release year:
2005
performance:
7
sound:
3
reviewed by:
Bryan Dailey
Looking back 25 years later at DEVO, what sticks in my mind the most
isn’t the red spud energy hats or the legless white uniform space
suits. It is the numbers of bands who have since driven down the
alternative rock road that DEVO paved. Like Frank Zappa before them,
DEVO took “weird” rock and turned it into something people would
actually listen to on the radio. From legendary alt rockers like Oingo
Boingo and the B-52’s to modern-day punkers like Green Day and The
Offspring, these groups all owe a little thanks to DEVO for having the
guts to make quirky pop music and not be apologetic about it.

artist:
Dire Straits
album:
Brothers in Arms - 20th Anniversary Edition
format:
DualDisc
label:
Warner Bros.
release year:
2005
performance:
7.5
sound:
6.5
reviewed by:
Charles Andrews
Sure, sure, sure. You’ve got this album. Somewhere. Or you did have it
at one time. Dog ate it. Disappeared at a party. Ex took off with it,
along with that Krug ’88 and your heart and several other things she
did not bring into the cohabitation. Yeah, you and 25 million other
jakes. No, seriously.